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December 17 – December 22, 2018

NASA’s InSight lander placed its seismometer on Mars on Dec. 19, 2018. This was the first time a seismometer had ever been placed onto the surface of another planet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

December 19, 2018 – NASA’s InSight lander has deployed its first instrument onto the surface of Mars, completing a major mission milestone. New images from the lander show the seismometer on the ground, its copper-colored covering faintly illuminated in the Martian dusk. It looks as if all is calm and all is bright for InSight, heading into the end of the year. Read More

Engineers practice deploying InSights instruments in a lab at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.Engineers practice deploying InSight’s instruments in a lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Several of them are wearing sunglasses to block the bright yellow lights in the test space, which mimic sunlight as it appears on Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPGP

December 18, 2018 – NASA’s InSight lander is due to set its first science instrument on Mars in the coming days. But engineers here on Earth already saw it happen – last week. Like NASA’s Curiosity rover, InSight has a full-scale working model at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This sister lander, aptly named ForeSight, lets the team test all operations before they happen on Mars. Read More

This image was made by combining hundreds images taken between August and mid-December by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). It has been colored using deep blue for the darkest regions and yellow for the brightest. Ultima Thule is the bright yellow spot in the middle. The two possible flyby distances for New Horizons are indicated by the two concentric circles. The mission has decided to fly along the closer path, toward the target point marked by an X. Individual images contain many background stars, but by combining images taken at different distances from Ultima Thule, most of the stars can be identified and removed. However, some of them leave behind traces, which can be seen as faint circles radiating away from the target point. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

December 18, 2018 – With no apparent hazards in its way, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been given a “go” to stay on its optimal path to Ultima Thule as it speeds closer to a January 1 flyby of the Kuiper Belt object a billion miles beyond Pluto – the farthest planetary flyby in history. Read More

December 17, 2018 – United Launch Alliance (ULA) has issued its request for student teams from kindergarten through 12th grade to create “payloads” for the 2019 ULA and Ball Aerospace Student Rocket Launch. More than 20 K-12 student teams will have a chance to design, build and launch objects, experiments or instruments on the ULA-intern-built Future Heavy Super Sport rocket next summer. Teams can choose to compete for a chance to win up to $5,000 for their school or sponsoring nonprofit organization by guiding their payload closest to a designated ground-based target. Read More

Sierra Nevada Corporation Wins Advanced Propulsion Contract

December 17, 2018 – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has won a contract to develop innovative propulsion systems for the initial phase of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Operational Fires, or OpFires, program. Read More

Test firing of the Northrop Grumman-manufactured launch abort motor in Promontory, Utah, confirmed the motor can activate within milliseconds and will perform as designed under cold temperatures. Image Credit: Northrop Grumman

December 17, 2018 – Northrop Grumman Corporation along with NASA and Lockheed Martin successfully performed a ground firing test of the abort motor for NASA’s Orion spacecraft Launch Abort System (LAS) at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Promontory, Utah on December 13. The abort motor is a major part of the LAS, which provides an enhancement in spaceflight safety for astronauts. The completion of this milestone brings Orion one step closer to its first flight atop NASA’s Space Launch System and to enabling humans to explore the moon, Mars and other deep space destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Read More

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Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and women behind the amazing New Horizons mission to Pluto and the upcoming New Year encounter with Ultima Thule. Told from the perspective of mission leader Dr. Alan Stern and a dedicated team of scientists, this book gives a rare behind-the-scenes look at how an idea becomes a NASA mission, and the excitement of exploring new worlds.

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